Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 2 - Flipbook - Page 36
p32
p32
Small Personage
1945
Oil on canvas board
10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)
inscriptions
Recto not signed, not dated
Verso not seen
present owner
Unknown (said to have been destroyed,
ca. 1946)
provenance
Margarete and Heinz Schultz, 1945;
Robert Motherwell, ca. 1946
solo exhibitions
Arts Club of Chicago, 1946 (traveling),
cat. no. 8.
group exhibitions
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
September 1946 (traveling), cat. no. 68,
illus. p. 36; shown in New York only.
references
Celentano 1957, pp. 35, 98; Mattison
1985b, p. 165, illus. n.p. (fig. 125);
Mattison 1987, p. 141.
24
paintings on ca n v a s an d p a n e l
comments
The composition of this painting is
similar to that of a painting titled
Large Personage, which was an early
version of In Yellow and Black (p46).
John Cuddihy, who in the mid-1950s
codirected the HC Gallery in
Provincetown with Nathan Halper
(and who kept extensive Motherwell
scrapbooks, which are now in the
archives of the Museum of Modern
Art, New York), wrote in his copy of
the catalogue for the 1946 exhibition
Fourteen Americans that this painting
was “Sold to Schultz, retrieved,
destroyed.” (Heinz Schultz was the
co-owner of Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc.,
the publishers of the Documents of
Modern Art series.)
Our reproduction of this work
comes from the 1946 Museum of
Modern Art catalogue.
p33
p33
Composition
1945
Oil on canvas board
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
inscriptions
Recto not signed, not dated
Verso not seen [“signed, titled, and
dated 1945,” per Sotheby’s 1988]
artist’s studio number
p45-5189
present owner
Unknown
provenance
Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, 1946; private
collection; unknown owner; [Sotheby’s,
New York, February 19, 1988, lot 3,
illus. (not sold)]; [Sotheby’s, New York,
October 8, 1988, lot 17, illus. (not sold)]
solo exhibitions
Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, New York,
January 1946, cat. no. 7.
Arts Club of Chicago, 1946 (traveling),
cat. no. 6.
comments
Our reproduction of this work comes
from the October 1988 Sotheby’s
catalogue.
